Jeff Perry Quotes

Even when you are playing someone who is real, you get their mannerisms and you get their little quirks, but, it still has to be something inside of you that connects with the role, or else you will not be any good.

I think you ultimately have to love who you're playing. You have to have that kind of feeling. You have to have passion for the person.

Whether it's a very dramatic part or a comical role, I feel I need to create the same thing: a full-fledged, three-dimensional character that the audience can identify with.

I just don't play a character for the heck of it. Rather, I always look for a human element in every character that I play.

As an actor, you always have to love who you are playing.

For a time, I really thought acting was just impersonating. But impersonation is just big brush strokes, really. What makes acting different is empathy.

In 'There Will Be Blood,' my character was someone who was an actor himself almost. He had a rehearsed quality about him. He was a performance artist in a way.

So much of movie acting is in the lighting. And in loving your characters. I try to know them, and with that intimacy comes love. And now, I love Voldemort.

If you can just actually let the character be for a bit, then you get the right sense.

My approach as an actor has always been the same, in that the greatest gift that you're ever going to have is your imagination because you're not going to have all life experiences. So you draw on things that are sort of close to it but you spend your time expanding on it or drawing something specific on whatever your situation is.

I seem to have to make my characters family before I can access their hearts in any way that matters.

Part of an actor's job is to find correlations between your own life and the life of the person you are playing.

In acting, you have to pull from real-life situations, from people, to help develop a character.

If I don't fall in love with my characters, I cannot shoot.

You have to love the guy that you play, even if you play the villain, you've got to love him.

As an actor, what you dream of is being able to portray people that people empathize with and understand and really feel for.

I love to evoke the bones and meat and thoughts of characters.

Every actor turns everything round to their character.

I've always felt, even with sketches, that if you don't care about these people, then it doesn't matter.

I always find something in all the characters I play. I fall in love with them a little bit.

I think, ultimately, if you create characters that people like and can relate to, your characters are grounded on a human level even if your cars are not.

Sometimes you read things that people don't even notice in a performance, that you just are moved by or understand that this actor is really living his or her life on the screen. The first time I realized that was when I watched Brando in 'On the Waterfront.'

I'm focused on finding characters I connect to.

When I read a script, the important thing is that I can connect in some way with that character and have some idea from what his story is that I can tell that story too, because that's all acting is, is storytelling.

As an actor, I think it is important you at least almost like the character that you're playing. Or can find a personal justification for the character as to why they're doing what they're doing.